


Bent

by dancingpenguin57



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/M, No Fluff, Post-Canon, Seriously there's no fluff here, Supreme Leader Kylo Ren
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-02
Updated: 2018-04-02
Packaged: 2019-04-17 04:30:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,800
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14180658
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dancingpenguin57/pseuds/dancingpenguin57
Summary: She shouldn't be surprised that he used the same tactics on her that had been used on him. He shouldn't be surprised that they worked.





	Bent

“I’m here to rescue you,” the traitor said, heroically.

“I don’t _need_ rescuing,” Rey snapped. “I chose to be here.”

Kylo Ren smirked over Rey’s shoulder, feeling something in his chest swell with smug pride.

“No, Rey. I know this isn’t what you want. This isn’t _you_. You don’t even _look_ like you anymore!”

Kylo Ren allowed himself to filter out the rest of the obviously-planned speech, knowing that he had already won. He took the half-step that was necessary to brush the front of his body against her and heard a triumphant fanfare when she leant her weight back against him reassuringly.

“You’re wrong, Finn,” she said when the ex-trooper was done, and Kylo Ren frowned. She was so _close_. She was _almost_ perfect. Why did she have to give it a name?

Names needed to be earned. Kylo Ren had earned his. He had killed for it. He had died for it. That’s why he wanted so badly to hate it when she used the one he had thrown away (but he couldn’t hate it; he liked it; wanted to hear her say it as a promise, whisper it, giggle it; so she did, over and over; and every single time it sliced him to his core, but he was constantly waiting for the next time she would mercifully re-open the wound).

The argument escalated until Rey finally rose both of her hands in consternation and Force-pushed the intruder back into the turbolift it had emerged from. She urged the doors to snap shut, blocking it out. The move was brilliantly executed, and almost effortless on her part, because she was capable of so many more extraordinary things.

The traitor banged helplessly against the doors for several moments, but Rey’s seal couldn’t be breached. It was still calling out to her, but Kylo Ren didn’t bother trying to make out its words. He was still, infuriatingly, thinking about something else it had said.

‘ _You don’t even_ look _like you anymore_.’

An obvious lie. She looked fierce, regal, powerful. She looked like everything she was ever meant to be.

But when Rey turned to step into his embrace Kylo Ren held her at arm’s length and lowered his face to _look_ at her (just to prove the traitor wrong, he told himself). He had looked at her every day for months: had watched her laughing and crying and reading and eating, had sometimes watched her for _hours_ while she was sleeping. But somehow, despite his watchfulness, he had missed the subtle changes that had taken over her. Her face wasn’t the same one he had seen the last time these three people had convened, in the forest on Starkiller Base. Her skin was paler, and her freckles had begun to die off, because she hadn’t seen sunlight in a long time. He could convince himself that he wasn’t wholly to blame for that. The loftiness of their positions demanded that they spent the bulk of their time travelling through hyperspace. Appearances changed sometimes, and it wasn’t always a symptom of some profound shift.

But her eyes had changed, too, and he couldn’t hide from the truth in them. They carried a new and weary fatigue that he knew he was solely responsible for.

She pressed lightly against his hold and he relaxed it so she could move closer, because he had completed his inspection. And because he knew what she would do next, and had decided to allow it (he didn’t want it; he didn’t need it). She wrapped her hands as far as she could around his upper arms and rose up on her toes to kiss his cheek softly (she always did it softly, in complete defiance of everything else that he was) and then rested her own cheek against it, in a manner that she clearly intended to be soothing (not being enlightened enough to know that he _couldn’t_ be soothed).

Her eyes met his now, and she pushed the weariness away so that they could crinkle at the edges when she smiled.

“Ben, it’s alright. Relax. I’m not going anywhere.”

_Ben_.

_It’s alright_.

_Ben_.

Suddenly he saw the obvious, painful truth of the situation. She had changed. He had known it all along, because he had helped her to do it: coaxed and seduced and wheedled to try to make her just like him. He knew exactly how she felt, having the tendrils of promise and security (false, lies; but so was everything else) worm their way inside her mind, as they had once wormed inside his.

The same techniques had broken Ben, and allowed Kylo Ren to rise from his ashes. But Rey had a soft strength that Ben had never had. She didn’t break, she bent. She bent further and further as he pushed harder and harder, and once she had run out of room to bend she would start twisting, and then she would be completely his. Twisting was worse than breaking. Twisting was _more_ than breaking. She had always been more. And he so desperately wanted her to twist, wanted to keep pushing; but he couldn’t _ever_ let it happen; but it was meant to be, it was her destiny; but she deserved so much more; but he would give her everything; but he couldn’t, not really, because he was defective; but so was she; but she was _perfect_ without him; but she was perfect _with_ him.

Rey knew that his thoughts were derailing. Her grip on him tightened, her sharp fingernails biting into his skin almost hard enough to draw blood even through his woolen sleeves -- a timely reminder of the violence he had stirred within her -- and hissed at him, demanding that he _say something_.

He pulled away from her, as if dragging himself, and tried to turn.

“Don’t you _dare_ ,” Rey said, and clutched angrily at his cloak as it whipped past her. They tugged pathetically against each other for a few moments until finally the force of their battle caused it to come undone from his shoulders, and he stumbled forward clumsily. It was acceptable only because he knew she had stumbled backward with exactly as little grace.

Rey used the momentum to continue backing herself up against the wall. Then she slid to the floor and wrapped her prize around her own shoulders, in a strange display of simultaneous submission and dominance.

She said nothing, and he knew she was waiting. Waiting for his body to relax and soften, for him to fold himself to sit beside her and share his thoughts. Waiting to rest her head on his shoulder and listen intently and, at the end, tell him that she understood. Waiting to _love_ him.

The knowledge burned as if she had thrust her lightsaber through his chest. He didn’t go to her. He couldn’t. Instead he moved to the window and looked out unseeingly, clasping his hands behind his back so they wouldn’t shake.

“I want you to leave,” Kylo Ren said coldly.

“You don’t mean that.”

“I want you to leave,” he repeated.

“You don’t mean that,” she repeated, too, but now there was a sliver of doubt in her voice.

Every instinct he had told him to pounce. To fling himself unerringly toward that tiny piece of doubt and feed it, nurture it, watch it grow big and strong. It would be so easy. He knew exactly which buttons to push: the same ones that he had felt roughly pushed inside himself every day for decades. He had sensed them in her too, from that very first moment, and he had allowed his fingers to ghost over them with something that he convinced himself was tenderness and understanding. It had been enough. The mere promise of pressure had been enough to coax her here to him. He could slam down on the trigger any time he wanted. And he wanted to, now.

He could whip that doubt into a painful whirlwind so quickly that she wouldn’t have the time or the will to armour herself against it. Within minutes he could have her crawling over to kneel at his feet, swearing that she wanted to stay, pleading with him not to send her away, mouthing at the crotch of his pants and begging him to release his cock from them so she could wrap her worshipful lips around it and prove her worth. He could have her moaning in ecstasy as he allowed her to pleasure him, and squeezing tears of gratitude from her eyes as he rewarded her by releasing hot spurts of semen down her throat. She would be so beautiful that way.

A wave of crippling nausea rolled through him at the thought.

“I _need_ you to leave,” Ben said.

He heard her drop his cloak to the floor, and the rustle of her clothes moving against themselves as she rose to her feet. He wasn’t surprised. Rey always heeded Ben’s requests, even though they were feeble and insipid and went against everything that he _knew_ he wanted. That he _deserved_.

He knew exactly what he would see if he turned to look at her, but he couldn’t stop himself from wanting it (“ _Weak_.”) so he turned.

Rey stood, tall and defiant, her chin tilted as if she could look down her nose at him. She lifted one hand and his grandfather’s lightsaber -- no, _her_ lightsaber -- flew gracefully into it. She tucked it neatly into her belt in one swift movement, without moving her gaze from him. The confident, effortless way that she entwined her will into the Force made his heart ache, as it did every time. This was true beauty.

He knew exactly what she was seeing on his face, because he had no mask to hide it from her, and this was one of those rare moments (but perhaps becoming more common? Rage stormed inside him at the notion) when Ben stopped being a pathetic child and became strong enough to morph his own features.

If his naked longing moved her, it didn’t show on her face. But her eyes flashed, as if she were galvanised.

“I’ll be back, you know.” Her declaration rang out clear and confident, like a bell.

“I know.” His own voice wavered, but he didn’t know what to do about that. There was no one who would punish him for it now. Maybe it was something that needed to just be accepted and moved on from.

He turned around so he wouldn’t have to see her leave. But she appeared to him again soon after, far below his feet, striding out toward the docked _Falcon_ without hesitation. The walk took several minutes, and he knew that she could feel his gaze following her every step. She didn’t look back.

Ben smiled.

**Author's Note:**

> This was a drabble that I wrote quite a few weeks ago, but today I decided to clean it up, as a palate-cleanser between writing chapters of Ashes of the Empire. No plans to continue this at all, because you know I am all about the happy endings, and this probably wouldn't have one. Thanks for reading :)


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